United States to reward Mojahedin Khalq terror group for assassination of Iranian scientists (aka; MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)

United Statesto reward Mojahedin Khalq terror group for assassination of Iranian scientists

(aka; MKO, MEK, Rajavi cult)

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... The United States designated the MKO as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. The group has appealed to be taken off the list, claiming it renounced terrorism in 2001. This is while the MKO has been confirmed to be involved in or behind several terrorist attacks against Iranian citizens since then. The MKO members fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up their camp near the Iranian border.The group is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is responsible for numerous acts of terror and violence against Iranian civilians and government officials ...

Members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) terrorist group (File photo)

The US Court of Appeals says it will remove the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization from the list of terrorist groups if the secretary of state does not decide on the MKO’s appeal within four months.

“We order the secretary to act on PMOI's (MKO) petition no later than four months from the issuance of this opinion," said the court on Friday.

The court then warned Clinton that if she does not decide within four months, it would issue a so-called writ of mandamus order and remove the group itself.

"Failing that, the petition for a writ of mandamus setting aside the FTO (foreign terrorist organization) designation will be granted,” the court’s statement added.

The United States designated the MKO as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.

The group has appealed to be taken off the list, claiming it renounced terrorism in 2001.

This is while the MKO has been confirmed to be involved in or behind several terrorist attacks against Iranian citizens since then.

The MKO members fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up their camp near the Iranian border.

The group is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community and is responsible for numerous acts of terror and violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.

... As the United States and its allies offer unflinching support to armed opposition groups under cover of “democratic activism” in non-acquiescent countries in the region, any popular revolution in Iran would unquestionably be supported and used to pressure the government from within, even using the opportunity to launch an armed opposition insurrection. An articled published in The New Yorker by Seymour M. Hersh entitled, “Our Men in Iran?,” documents how members of Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group and US State Department-listed terrorist organization, were trained ...

As prospects for a preemptive strike on Iran remain ever present, the recent round of talks between the P5+1 and Iran in Baghdad on May 23rd, 2012 have resulted in a familiar stalemate. As a precondition for any deal to stop higher-grade uranium enrichment, Tehran requested immediate relief from economic sanctions as a show of reciprocity [1].

Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili emphasized Tehran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the P5+1 refused to scale back economic sanctions, insisting Iran suspend its 20% uranium enrichment program [2].

As leaders in Tel Aviv assert that Israel may conduct military strikes against Iran before the US Presidential elections in November [2], Major General Hassan Firouzabadi of the Iranian Armed Forces reiterated Iran’s commitment to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime and the continual support of Palestinian autonomy [3]. Even if Tehran reaches an agreement with the IAEA, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to rule out a military strike against Iranian facilities, demanding that Iran dismantle its uranium enrichment sites and use only imported fuel [4].

Although the recent conference in Baghdad failed to meet the expectations of its participants, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany have agreed to hold another round of talks in Moscow on June 18th [5]. As a further indication of division between P5+1 participants, Germany has pledged to work toward a political and diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear energy issues by providing Tehran with technical assistance in developing a peaceful nuclear program [6], while the US Senate recently approved a new round of sanctions against Iran aimed at any country or company that provides technology or resources to develop Tehran’s oil and uranium resources [7]. The new legislation targets Iran’s national oil and tanker firms and widens sanctions on Iran’s energy sector to any international joint venture where Tehran is a substantial partner or investor. As the US continually pressures Beijing to join its oil embargo, the Chinese Foreign Ministry remains vocally opposed to the new package of economic sanctions against Iran [8].

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich blasted the US for imposing new unilateral sanctions against Iran, describing the move as an irrational measure intended to the harm pace of negotiations [9]. India has remained adamant against expanding sanctions on Iran [10], as New Delhi and Tehran agree to increase annual bilateral trade two thirds to $25 billion by 2015, confirming their intent to bypass US sanctions by making payments for a significant portion of its oil purchases from Iran in rupees [11]. As further cooperation between the US and the Persian Gulf monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) remains evident through their unanimous support of Syria’s armed opposition, Saudi Arabia remains a major beneficiary under the continued imposition of sanctions on Tehran from Washington. Japan and South Korea once accounted for 26% of Iran's oil exports [12], now both Seoul [13] and Tokyo [14] have sought stable supplies of crude oil from Saudi Arabia. As South Africa turns to Saudi Arabia after halting business with Iran [15], the kingdom’s crude output is at a thirty-year high [16], as shipments to the United States quietly rise to 25% [17].As a result of sanctions on Iran, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund predicts that oil prices could spike as much as 30% and hover around $160 per barrel if Iran's crude oil exports fell sharply [18]. As Iranian production hits a ten-year low as of March 2012, industry-wide fears of a recession-fueled fall in demand have prompted the reduction of total world oil production through the imposition of embargoes on Iranian oil; higher prices triggered by a supply squeeze from the sanctions work to further benefit international oil companies and producers like Saudi Arabia [19]. In March 2012, the US granted Japan and 10 EU nations a six-month reprieve to gradually cut their imports of Iranian oil, lest they be subjected to their own financial sanctions and cut off from the US financial system [20]. Under the 2012 US National Defense Authorization Act, Barack Obama can impose financial sanctions on foreign banks that carry out financial transactions with Iran's central bank "for the purchase of petroleum or petroleum products from Iran" [21].

Given the fragile state of the European economy, the further implementation of financial sanctions on nations who fail to comply with the oil embargo on Iran is thoroughly unreasonable, with entirely negative implications for the European Union. Any further escalation of tensions with Iran would likely trigger inflated oil prices, which could further cripple the unstable economies of Greece and Portugal and potentially lead to those nations leaving the European Union. Despite Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi downplaying the negative effects of sanctions [22], inflation is soaring within Iran as the cost of food increases between 25% to 125%, with 60% of the population relying on cash subsidies handed out by Tehran [23]. Iran’s budget deficit for the 2011/2012 fiscal year is expected to be between $30 to $50 billion, as the Iranian rial continues to plunge after the imposition of the oil embargo, causing widespread panic buying of gold among the Iranian public [24].

As commodity prices in Iran continue to skyrocket, former Mossad director Efraim Halevy remarked, “The rial is going down, it's gone down by over 50 percent. It's almost impossible to describe the damage done," while former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami forewarns, "When a national currency loses 50% of its value in a matter of weeks, economic collapse is at hand.” [25][26]. As Iran struggled to replace it’s client base following the imposition of US-led economic sanctions, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz spoke before the Israeli cabinet predicting the collapse of the Iranian economy [27]. Haaretz reports the remarks of an unnamed senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, "These aren't sanctions against Iran. Instead, they are sanctions imposed by the West to curb Israel's attack plans, had Israel not spoken out about its intention to attack, none of this would be happening. The Iranians are frightened. You have to understand what's going on there in stores; citizens grab food off the shelves because they are worried about an impending attack. Inflation is soaring and the currency has lost half its value. All this attests to fear." [28]

As the black market in Iran expands amid an increasing lack of public confidence in the rial, the role of the state is indirectly strengthened because smuggling imports requires strong connections within the regime, leaving the poor and lower middle class susceptible to poverty while the officials being targeted by sanctions themselves benefit from the embargo [29]. The fact that Obama administration chose to preemptively impose sanctions on Iran before the P5+1 meeting in Baghdad even took place indicates that the objective of US-Israeli policy toward Iran seeks not mutual agreement and reconciliation, but the further perpetuation of conflict to ensure that the question of Iran’s nuclear energy issue remains unsolved. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the scope for sanctions over Iran's nuclear program had been exhausted and any additional measures were intended to provoke discontent in the Iranian population [30].

As the United States and its allies offer unflinching support to armed opposition groups under cover of “democratic activism” in non-acquiescent countries in the region, any popular revolution in Iran would unquestionably be supported and used to pressure the government from within, even using the opportunity to launch an armed opposition insurrection. An articled published in The New Yorker by Seymour M. Hersh entitled, “Our Men in Iran?,” documents how members of Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group and US State Department-listed terrorist organization, were trained in communications, cryptography, small-unit tactics and weaponry by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at a base in Nevada starting in 2005 [31]. JSOC instructed MEK operatives on how to penetrate major Iranian communications systems, allowing the group to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran for the purpose of sharing them with American intelligence. The group has been implicated in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists [32] and the planting of the Stuxnet malware that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz [33].

MEK was founded in 1965 as a Marxist Islamic mass political movement aimed at agitating the monarchy of the US-backed Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The group initially sided with revolutionary clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but eventually turned away from the regime during a power struggle that resulted in the group waging urban guerilla warfare against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1981. The organization was later given refuge by Saddam Hussein and mounted attacks on Iran from within Iraqi territory, killing an estimated 17,000 Iranian nationals in the process [34]. MEK exists as the main component of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a “coalition of democratic Iranian organizations, groups and personalities,” calling itself a "parliament-in-exile” seeking to “establish a democratic, secular and coalition government” in Iran [35]. Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, UN special representative in Iraq Martin Kobler organized efforts to relocate MEK insurgents to a former US military base near the Baghdad airport, with the full support of the US Embassy in Iraq and the State Department to avoid violent clashes between the MEK and the Shiite-led Iraqi government [36].

MEK has long received material assistance from Israel, who assisted the organization with broadcasting into Iran from their political base in Paris, while the MEK and NCRI have reportedly provided the United States with intelligence on Iran's nuclear program. Despite the documented cases of atrocities committed by MEK forces, elder statesmen such as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley K. Clark, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former 9/11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton were paid $20,000 to $30,000 per engagement to endorse the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq from the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations [37]. NBC News reports that Israel provided financing, training and arms to Mujahideen-e Khalq, who are responsible for killing five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 using motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars [38]. A recent investigation by the US Treasury Department has indicated that Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization is financially sponsored by the Israeli regime and Saudi Arabia [39].

Upon launching a war against Iran, aggressor nations would likely utilize MEK forces as opposition insurgents and could even recognize the touted “parliament-in-exile”, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as Iran’s legitimate representative, much like how the Friends of Syria group has recognized the opposition Syrian National Council [40]. From her political base in Paris, exiled NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi is a strong candidate for Western support in contrast to internal opposition figures such as Mir-Hossein Mousavi, former Iranian Prime Minister turned political reformist and figurehead of the Green Movement demonstrations in 2009 following the victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in elections widely perceived as a fraudulent [41]. Although Mousavi has advocated greater personal freedoms in Iran and the disbanding of religious police enforcers, he is a strong advocate of Iran’s nuclear energy program and would likely never yield the kind of acquiescence to Western policy that exiled figures such as Maryam Rajavi would uphold in exchange for political support and material assistance [42]. It is widely believed that Mousavi is currently held under house arrest without an arrest warrant, charge or trial [43].

While figures such as Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi publically renounce nuclear weapons [44], Iranian scientists claim to be enriching uranium to 20% to develop radiopharmaceuticals and industrial isotopes under the supervision of the IAEA inspectors [45]. On October 1, 2010, the IAEA proposed a deal according to which Iran would send 3.5% enriched uranium abroad and receive 20% enriched uranium from potential suppliers in return, namely France and the United States, who Tehran accused of stalling negotiations from the start [46]. Tehran was offered a deal at a time when its supplies of 20% enriched uranium were nearly depleted, however Iranian lawmakers rejected the deal after technical studies showed that it would only take two to three months for any country to further enrich the nuclear stockpile and turn it into metal nuclear plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, while suppliers had announced that they would not return fuel to Iran in any time less than seven months [47].

Iran has made efforts to ensure the transparency of its nuclear program by allowing IAEA probes to inspect Iranian sites such as the Parchin military complex where the agency has reported suspicious activities in the past [48]. The IAEA’s recent discovery of traces of uranium enriched up to 27% at Iran's Fordo enrichment plant sparked controversy, although the enrichment figure is still substantially below the 90% level needed to make the fissile core required in nuclear arms; officials conceded that the likely explanation for the increased level of enrichment was attributed to centrifuges initially over-enriching at the start as technicians adjusted their output [49]. It should be noted that former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Hans Blix has challenged the IAEA’s own reports on Iran’s nuclear activities, accusing the agency of relying on unverified intelligence from the US and Israel [50]; the IAEA’s most recent report cited Tehran's progress toward enrichment technology with complete cooperation with the agency and confirms the non-weaponized status of Iranian nuclear activities [51].

Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama regarding the status of Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons [52]. Bastin reiterates, “The ultimate product of Iran's gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives” [53]. The US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has recently released claims that Iran’s total production of enriched uranium over the past five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons stating, "This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons." [54]

Bastin’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program further emphasizes the impracticality of weaponizing the hexafluoride product of Tehran’s gas-centrifuges, as the resulting deterrent would yield the equivalent explosive capacity equal to a kiloton of conventional explosives, producing a highly inefficient nuclear weapon. If Iran chose to produce nuclear weapons in this way, it would take several years to reach the 90% enrichment levels needed for a nuclear deterrent; Iran has complied with the IAEA and the United Nations on this issue and there is no substantial evidence indicating that Tehran has any intention of enriching uranium to 90% for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons. On March 23rd, 2012, Reuters released a special report entitled, “Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent”, concluding that the United States, its European allies and even Israel agree that Tehran does not have a bomb, it has not decided to build one, and it is years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead [55]. As the West continually implements an unyielding regime of sanctions against Iran when they themselves acknowledge the civilian nature of the Iranian nuclear program, the overwhelming motive behind their actions to pressure Iran into full-scale war on an unprecedented scale is self-evident.

The United States has produced more than 70,000 nuclear weapons between 1951 and 1998 [56], while Israel possess a nuclear weapons stockpile ranging from 75 to 400 warheads [57]. While the hazardous ramifications of Iran’s nuclear development pervade public consciousness, the fact that US legal doctrine has worked to further blur the line between conventional and nuclear warfare remains rarely acknowledged. The March 2005 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff envisages “contingency plans” for an offensive first strike use of nuclear weapons against both Iran and North Korea, providing the legal mandate to carry out pre-emptive nuclear war, both in terms of military planning as well as defense procurement and production [58] The 2002 adoption of the Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review by the US Congress marked the cease of prohibition on low yield nuclear weapons and provided funding allocations to pursue the development of tactical nuclear weapons, such as bunker buster (earth penetrator) mini-nukes [59].

The revised Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (March 2005) envisaged five scenarios where “the use of nuclear weapons might be requested,” namely, “to attack adversary installations including weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies” and “to counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces”. The doctrine further cites, “Responsible security planning requires preparation for threats that are possible, though perhaps unlikely today. The lessons of military history remain clear: unpredictable, irrational conflicts occur. Military forces must prepare to counter weapons and capabilities that exist in the near term even if no immediate likely scenarios for war are at hand. To maximize deterrence of WMD use, it is essential US forces prepare to use nuclear weapons effectively and that US forces are determined to employ nuclear weapons if necessary to prevent or retaliate against WMD use” [60].

The possibility of nuclear strikes against Iran pose staggeringly frightening implications for the human family, as the very nations crying foul about the danger of nuclear weapons have prepared the legal infrastructure to use them against others, preemptively. While trust towards the Iranian regime remains questionable among segments of the Iranian population and the international community, Tehran has complied with the IAEA and no evidence exists to implicate Iran with constructing a nuclear weapon. While the fiery rhetoric of Iranian and Israeli officials remains entirely counterproductive, Tel Aviv has shown the least initiative to constructively partake in diplomacy with Iran, as top Israeli officials refuse to even meet with US envoy to the P5+1, Wendy Sherman, who reportedly was sent to Tel Aviv to "reaffirm our unshakable commitment to Israel's security" [61]. As Israel aggressively employs an apartheid policy domestically, nuclear-armed Tel Aviv boasts its right to strike Iran without consent from any other nation [62]. As our species approaches the increasingly dangerous crossroads of the 21st Century, nations such as Germany, Russia, India and China must utilize their collective influence and technology to mediate this impending security crisis in the Middle East.

Although Iran has asserted its right to develop peaceful nuclear technology as a signatory to the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, its uranium-based fuel has wrought negative and inaccurate accusations regarding Tehran’s intentions to weaponize. To ensure the further deflection of erroneous accusations, Iran can truly make an example of itself by phasing out uranium-based nuclear technology and shifting to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts used in Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) nuclear technology powered by thorium, an obscure, mildly radioactive metal produced as a waste product from the mining of rare earth minerals. Thorium is plentiful, easily accessible and energy dense, a metric ton produces as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 ton of coal [63]. Thorium-based reactors consume their own hazardous waste and would serve Iran’s internal needs far more effectively than its current technology. As a nuclear fuel, thorium is both cleaner and safer than uranium and produces benign alpha radiation, unable to even penetrate skin [64].

The governments of China [65] and India [66] have expressed great interest in further developing thorium molten-salt reactor technology. Iran holds 9% of the world’s oil reserves and 17% of its natural gas reserves; the abundant supply of fossil fuel resources has indirectly discouraged the pursuit of alternative renewable energy sources [67]. Iran has enormous potential as a producer of geothermal energy, particularly in the provinces of Azerbaijan and Tehran [68]. There is no shortage of solutions to the current problems faced by the international community in its efforts to oversee peaceful energy technology in Iran. China, Germany and India could share their growing technical expertise with Iran to develop energy solutions that can never be used as a pretext for external military strikes. No credible basis exists to warrant the implementation of economic sanctions against Iran, which are ostensibly in place to coax social unrest and collapse the Iranian economy.

For all the belligerence exuded by the current Iranian regime, the unwavering aggressive it receives from outside forces does nothing to offer the people of Iran any tangible solutions to better themselves and their standard of living. Although the further application of sanctions will inevitably have damaging effects on Tehran, inflated oil price fluctuations have the potential to fracture the fledging austerity-states of the European Union. The failure of emerging markets to adhere to full embargoes on Iran once they come into effect would send a strong message to the architects of such disastrous policy. As nations such as China and Russia acknowledge the imbalanced nature of power in the Security Council and the aggressive stance of the United States and Israel, these nations can best utilize their power by offering technological and diplomatic solutions to avert the detrimental social, economic and spiritual consequences of war.

Nile Bowie is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

... Now we can begin to understand how this relatively small player came to be the organisation that broke the news that Iran had been 'secretly hiding' uranium enrichment facilities from the IAEA for two decades. Capitalising on the issue du jour, Iran's purported nuclear weapons, the MEK network focused on telling the Necocon chicken-hawks in Washington exactly what the Israelis wanted them to hear. Taking outward form as either the NCRI or the PMOI, the cult has been freely holding press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in London, New York, Paris and Brussels ...

The Munafiqeen [Hypocrites] will be in the lowest depths of the Fire: no helper wilt thou find for them.

~ Sura 4 (An-Nisa), ayah 145, Qur'an

A couple of months ago, one of those dubious leaks made by "unnamed US officials" caught my eye. US media did something it doesn't often do; it publicised 'secret' Israeli government policy. Giving five minutes of prime time TV to Iranian scientist Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of Ali Larijani, philosopher and chairman of the Parliament of Iran, two "senior U.S. officials" confirmed for NBC News what Mohammad Larijani was telling them: that Israel was behind the assassinations of Iranian scientists.

Specifically, the US officials stated that Israel's Mossad was financing, training and arming an Iranian dissident group that goes by many names, but which we'll call the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) for now. In return, the MEK is "providing Israel with information." Speaking through NBC, these unknown officials confirmed what Larijani and the Iranian government have been saying for years: that Israel, through the MEK, carried out the attacks in which motorcycle-borne assailants attached sophisticated magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims' cars. The US officials further stated that the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

No sooner had the story been leaked than a series of car bombings took place outside Israeli embassies in India, Georgia and Singapore. The same types of bombs used in the assassinations of Iranian scientists were used to blow up vehicles near Israeli diplomats. The Israelis never actually intended to kill any of their own, because the Mossad warned the embassies ahead of time. Israel of course blamed Iran for the bombings. But these stunts were clearly intended to deflect attention from the US government's confirmation that Israel is murdering Iranian scientists through its surrogate, the MEK, and, once again, portray Israel as the eternal victim.

The Obama administration may not have had direct involvement in the assassination of Iranian scientists, but it is the height of hypocrisy for the US government to pretend that it isn't involved in subverting Iran's civilian nuclear program. The CIA was kidnapping Iranian scientists and bribing them to 'defect' as recently as 2010 and as far back as 2007. Since at least 2005, the US regime has been uptoitsneck in dealings with multiple terrorist organisations based in countries encircling Iran, of which Jundullah, in the region of Balochistan on the Pakistani border, is arguably the most notorious.

Have a listen to this NBC commentary on the Israeli assassinations program 'leak' and take note of the 'expert view' at the end:

Expert: The US has been supporting a number of covert operations against the Iranian nuclear program - that's a given, I think.

Anchor: Right, but not with this group.

Expert:But not with this group, and the US cannot act with this group. There is a problem with assassinations - they are illegal. There is a problem with dealing with a terrorist group...

What gives here? Someone or some group within the US government appears to have 'outed' their Israeli counterparts' machinations at the risk of drawing attention to their own involvement running terror campaigns against Iran. Everyone already knew that Israel was behind the assassinations, so that in itself isn't the key information here. The key seems to lie in the specific and deliberate focus being given to just one of the proxy terror groups being used against Iran; the MEK.

What is the MEK?

The 1979 revolution in Iran

In 1965, at the height of the Shah's reign of terror in Iran (facilitated by the US and UK), a group of young, middle class intellectuals began to organise a militant Iranian opposition group. Their brand of revolutionary ideology was based on selective interpretation of Shi'a Islamic theology and Marxist ideology. The 'Sazeman-e Mujahedin-e Khalq-e Iran' (Organization of People's Holy Warriors of Iran), now shortened to the 'Mujahedin-e Khalq' (People's Mujahedin), has an unusual and bloody history. Other acronyms used for MEK include include MKO (for Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization) and PMOI (People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran). Not to be confused with the Afghanistan Mujahedin, the indigenous pre-'al Qaeda' forces formed by the US to entice the Soviets to invade Afghanistan, the MEK, like all revolutionary movements, began with noble intentions to free a people from the yoke of imperialism, but underwent a series of metamorphoses. Today it is dominated by the cult of personality surrounding its leaders, Massoud and Maryam Rajavi, who have overseen its transition from an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist, pseudo-Islamic, Marxist revolutionary movement to a bizarre terrorist suicide cult whose members believe its leaders are the divine rulers-of-Iran-in-waiting.

One of the MEK's most militant activists, Massoud Rajavi was imprisoned in Iran from 1972-1979 but nonetheless remained influential within the group and rose to command it in 1975 after the Mojahedin experienced an internal schism. From his release from prison until today, he has maintained absolute control of the MEK and its associated groups. The MEK partnered with Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the Shah but fell out out of favour with the Iranian clergy when the dust settled in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khomeini blocked MEK leaders from running in the first post-revolution presidential elections. The MEK responded by staging anti-Khomeini demonstrations, which provoked a violent backlash from the new government and ignited a vicious cycle of attack and reprisal that led to the imprisonment, torture and death of thousands of Iranians in the early 1980s, predominantly anyone of left-leaning persuasion.

Altogether, some 10,000 Iranians have been killed by the MEK in its war against the Mullahs. Among their high-profile victims in devastating bombings were top Iranian officials, including President Rajai and Premier Mohammad Javad Bahonar in 1981. A number of MEK leaders were arrested and executed. Rajavi and his supporters fled into exile in France. Along with other Iranian opposition figures, they formed the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), ostensibly an umbrella group comprising dissidents of the Islamic Iranian regime, which Rajavi's MEK soon came to dominate.

Massoud Rajavi and Saddam Hussein (inset)

In the meantime, with encouragement and weapons from the Ronald Reagan administration, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran. A deal between France and Iran during the Lebanon Hostage crisis in 1986, combined with overtures from the Iraqi regime, saw the MEK and its newly formed military wing, the National Liberation Army (NLA), partner with the Iraqi leader. The MEK provided information to the Iraqis while the ruling Iraqi Ba'ath party armed Rajavi's 4,000 or so followers to the hilt, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a 1994 US State Department Report. This arrangement remained in place right up until Saddam's alleged capture during the Second so-called 'Gulf War' in 2003. An extravagant compound called Camp Ashraf was also built for the MEK just 80kms from the Iranian border. Rajavi and his followers relocated there from France in 1986. The alliance was seen as treason by a majority of Iranians. Although it resulted in many MEK members leaving in disgust, the organisation continued to grow thanks to Massoud Rajavi's powerful hold over most of its members, successful recruitment drives and fundraising through Iran's considerable diaspora.

The Iran-Iraq War cost the lives of over a million people. The MEK is naturally vilified by most in Iran because of its collaboration with an invading force. Iranian officials refer to the movement as Munafiqeen, 'Hypocrites', a pun on Mujahideen The MEK is positioning itself as The Opposition to the Iranian government, with Maryam Rajavi being referred to as The President of Iran. Yet even the Green Movement, which amassed fairly significant support in Iran in the run-up to the 2009 presidential elections (albeit with the dubious support of Western intelligence agencies) has moved to distance itself from the cult. Zahra Rahnavard, wife of reformist presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, has stated categorically that "Mr. Mousavi, Mr. Khatami, and Mr. Karroubi and all of us within the Green Movement do not consider the MEK a part of the Green Movement."

Zombie Brigade: Rajavi 'devotees' at Camp Ashraf

Although the Iranian regime continued to undertake brutal reprisals against anyone suspected of being involved or sympathising with Rajavi's MEK, it was no longer having to 'counter-propagandise' the MEK's influence because the organisation's increasingly bizarre behaviour was beginning to speak for itself. While reconstituting the organisation in Paris, Massoud Rajavi decided that he needed a partner to run things jointly with him. The story goes that Mayriam Rajavi became his wife when a deputy within the organisation 'voluntarily' divorced her so that she could marry Massoud.

This bizarre move was echoed a series of extreme measures that transformed the organisation into the cult it has become today. All married couples were told they must divorce. Well, officially, all married couples 'voluntarily' agreed to divorce. Their children were sent into foster care with MEK members in cells abroad. The sexes were physically kept apart, both in Iraq and in France, including all the children from birth. Eye contact between the sexes was forbidden. Daily and weekly sessions were organised at which members would confess their most intimate thoughts, including their feelings towards other members. All emotions were to be channelled towards adoration of their leaders, the Rajavis, and 'the revolutionary struggle to free Iran.'

If you thought Jonestown was bad, wait till you hear about what has been going on inside Camp Ashraf.

In its forty five year history, the MEK organisation has undergone many public image changes; from guerrilla fighters, resistance army, terrorist entity to feminist democratic opposition. The man who has led the group through all these superficial incarnations is Massoud Rajavi. And behind the glamorous advertisements of a sophisticated and relentless propaganda machine, his single-minded pursuit of power at any cost and his fundamental belief in the use of violence to achieve this aim of power, has not changed one iota in all this time.

Rajavi was a charismatic speaker and skilled psychological manipulator. He discovered in himself a talent for totalitarian control which matched his narcissistic ambition for power. Although he began to convert the Mojahedin-e Khalq organisation into a cult while still in Paris, it was the acquisition of the isolated, closed world of Camp Ashraf which provided the perfect crucible to extend his experiment. In Camp Ashraf he has forced the MEK members along a most extraordinary route of mental and physical anguish to meet his needs.

Over the years former members who escaped from Camp Ashraf have told their stories to a world unwilling or unable to listen. Thousands of them consistently and courageously described the conditions of the internal revolutions and Rajavi's bizarre requirements for members to divorce and to remove all the children from the camp; to undergo the daily humiliations of public self-confessions which enforce the celibacy and gender apartheid; to suffer micro-management of their every waking moment which imposed deliberately exhausting work schedules and disorienting indoctrination sessions; to be deprived of any information from and contact with the outside world and their families. Rajavi did all this to keep his members from leaving. When this failed, he imprisoned them.

Camp Ashraf is now a double prison for the residents. They are trapped by Rajavi's psychological manipulations which engender paralysing fear in everyone behind the barbed wire fences which he has had erected to keep them physically inside. But they are trapped ultimately by the misguided ignorance and misplaced sympathy of all those external agencies which could take action to free them but don't.

Our kind of terrorist

MEK tanks in Iraq in the early 90s

By the late 1980s, the organisation's messianic bent was beginning to manifest itself. The Rajavis had amassed a heavily armed force, some 14,000 strong, which conducted raids into Iran. Towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War, on 26 July 1988, six days after the Ayatollah Khomeini had announced his acceptance of a UN-brokered ceasefire resolution, Massoud Rajavi ordered the NLA to cross the border on a suicide mission they called Operation Eternal Light. Their convoy of tanks got as far as the Iranian town of Islamabad-e Gharb, which they razed to the ground, before being beaten back to Iraq by overwhelming Iranian firepower. The NLA's last major offensive was conducted against Iraqi Kurds in 1991, when it joined Saddam Hussein's brutal repression of the Kurdish rebellion. Maryam Rajavi reportedly told her loyal subjects to "Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."

With Saddam Hussein falling out of favour with the West in the First Gulf War, the Rajavis reconfigured their standing army. They began to present a more benign image to the West, focusing their energy on the dissemination of propaganda and lobbying Western officials. At the same time, their military wing carried out violent attacks against Iranian government targets in the West, the most spectacular of which was a wave of coordinated attacks on 5 April 1992. MEK true-believers stormed Iranian diplomatic missions, took hostages and heavily vandalised premises in New York City, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Australia.

If Al Qaeda could do such a sophisticated military operation we must be able to do so in a much better manner... wait and see the fruits of our revolutionary Islam!

~ Massoud Rajavi, 12 September 2001

Buying Off Congress and the White House

Shortly after the US State Department placed MEK on its list of terrorist organisations in 1997, an illuminating report appeared in The Iran Brief, a private monthly publication read in Washington, DC intelligence circles. The report describes some of the findings of Operation Suture, an FBI investigation of MEK activities in the US.

The Iran BriefIssue Number 41, dated 12/8/97

Using Iranian-Americans, the FBI infiltrated the organization, tracked the movements of top Mujahedin officials, learned about their fundraising and recruitment activities, and mapped out the organization's extensive network of front companies in the United States, which an FBI source said numbered "in the hundreds."

In the mid-1980s, the Drug Enforcement Administration was pursuing two separate investigations against Mujahedin operatives involved in smuggling drugs into the United States through Europe, including heroin smuggling through Madrid, Spain, a source who was involved in the DEA investigation said. Neither DEA investigation led to prosecution. [Editor's note: historically, any large scale drug smuggling into the USA has been controlled by the CIA]

Al Gore received major campaign contributions from the MEK

Before it was shut down, the FBI was considering indicting Mujahedin members under the RICO act for racketeering, credit card fraud, phone fraud, and illegal fundraising. They had also uncovered a Virginia print shop used by the MEK to fabricate official Islamic Republic seals and stamps, used for fabricating documents they claimed to have obtained from sources in Iran. Many journalists, especially in Europe, have published such documents received from the Mujahedin without verifying their authenticity. In a letter to Rep. Lee Hamilton in September 20, 1993, the State Department alluded to this by noting that "the PMOI/NCR reporting often contains questionable statements and assertions which do not stand up to later examination. Our intelligence community judges that their reporting is not reliable without validation from other sources."

Operation Suture was also hampered by strong Congressional support for the Mujahedin led by Congressmen Mervyn Dymally (D,Ca), Dan Burton (R,Ind), Robert Torricelli (D,NJ), and Gary Ackerman (D,NY), and by then Senator Al Gore (D,Tenn).

An Iran Brief investigation, first aired in our September issue, found evidence of a Mujahedin effort to buy Congressional favor through coordinated campaign contributions by Mujahedin members and supporters in the United States. New Jersey Democrat Robert Torricelli was the most direct beneficiary of these contributions, having received more than $135,000 between April 1993 and November 1996, with an additional $23,000 going, apparently at his behest, to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at the time Torricelli was campaigning for the New Jersey Senate seat vacated by Bill Bradley.

A former FBI undercover operative who penetrated the group now claims that the campaign contributions were directly ordered by the group's leadership in Baghdad, and says he was present at a meeting in Ottawa in mid-1988 where a deputy to group leader Massoud Rajavi, who used the name Mohsen Rezai, told MEK operatives in the U.S. and Canada that they were to launch a massive campaign to buy influence in the U.S. Congress. "Even if you have to pay them off, do it," he quoted Rezai as saying. "It's not as if we haven't done it before."

Mohammad Mohaddessin, now Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the NCRI (MEK), presenting 'intelligence' on Iran at one of hundreds of press conferences he has held in Brussels and Washington, DC.

Following the November 1992 elections, the Mujahedin were suddenly awarded preferential treatment. MEK leader Massoud Rajavi wrote to Clinton asking for American support, and received a polite personal letter in reply which the group published in their propaganda reports as a sign of a new, pro-Mujahedin American policy. Shortly thereafter, the chairman of the Mujahedin's foreign affairs committee, Mohammad Mohaddessin, attended a fund-raiser in Washington, DC with President-elect Clinton and Al Gore, along with other Mujahedin representatives in the United States. Mohaddessin also attended the January 1993 Clinton-Gore inaugural, and was seen by several eye-witnesses in the VIP booth at the Capitol building.

The former undercover agent says he was told in 1993 by a top Mujahedin officer in Virginia that the group was elated with the new administration, because they had cultivated Vice President Al Gore while he was a Senator. He said the Mujahedin officer told him that the group gave Gore's presidential campaign some $250,000 in cash in 1988, when Gore was in dire need of money, and had remained in close contact with Gore's staff.

A State Department official told The Iran Brief that listing the Mujahedin as a terrorist organization has "opened the doors for the FBI and Treasury to investigate MEK fundraising activities in the United States."Many Iranian-Americans have complained of being harassed by the group in its quest for funds, and have identified a variety of "charities" and front companies it uses for these purposes. One such charity, 'Iran Aid', was closed down by the FBI in 1987 in California.

That US Congressmen were taking bribes isn't anything out of the ordinary, but taking campaign contributions in cash from a terrorist organisation that was extremely cosy with and funded by Saddam Hussein at a time when US media was painting Saddam as 'The New Hitler' is pretty extraordinary! Congressmen were apparently taken in by the Rajavis' slick efforts to distance their bloody war against Iran from their 'new-found mission' to raise awareness of human rights violations in Iran. But not everyone was taken in by it at the time.

MEK Terrorist HQ, Auvers-sur-Oise, northwest Paris, France

According to an August 2002 FBI report sent to Francis Taylor, Coordinator for Counter-terrorism at the US Dept of State, the FBI executed a warrant to search the premises of MEK's converted offices in Falls Church, Virginia, not 5 miles from the CIA's Langley HQ. The FBI was investigating how the various organisations (MEK, PMOI, MKO, NLA, NCRI, etc) all linked together. The FBI report named the organisation's HQ as Rue des Gords 17, Auvers-sur-Oise, on the Northwest outskirts of Paris in France. Among the interesting tidbits they unearthed was that all calls to the MEK's office at the National Press Club in Washington, DC were forwarded to the Falls Church address and that the organisation's official newspaper (the Mojahed Weekly) was prepared there. The FBI also seized publications containing details of NLA military activities, training manuals, operations maps and signed blank cheques used to pay their representatives' expenses and fund their activities. Contrary to what the MEK leadership was telling its gullible recruits and foreign dignitaries, the FBI concluded unequivocally that "the NRCI operates as an alias of the PMOI/MEK, despite whatever claims these entities make publicly that may fool outsiders and even some of those inside the entities."

This mattered to the FBI because 5 years previously in 1997, despite having bribed then Vice-President Al Gore in 1992, the MEK was officially listed as an 'FTO' (Foreign Terrorist Organization) by the US State Department because it had assassinated three US military officers and three defence contractors in Iran in the 1970s, was suspected of numerous other assassination attempts on American citizens and was attacking Iranian targets in the US and Europe. In 2004 the FBI launched a criminal investigation (Operation Eastern Approach) into now-illegal MEK activities in the US.

Washington's favorite terrorists at camp Ashraf

Through wiretaps, the FBI's LA offices discovered that the MEK was planning bombing attacks from their Paris headquarters and that its fundraising activity had actually increased since being outlawed in 1997. Money coerced from wealthy Iranian expatriates in the US and through drugs trafficking into the US was being "transferred overseas through a complex international money laundering operation that uses accounts in Turkey, France, Belgium, Germany, Norway, Jordan and the UAE." Although just one MEK affiliate was sentenced in the case of U.S. v. Tabatabai, the first successful prosecution in the US for providing material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, hundreds of MEK members were arrested or questioned by the FBI in joint operations with German and French intelligence. The FBI concluded that "this organization [MEK] routinely lobbies unwitting members of Congress under the pretext of human rights issues in Iran."

The FBI further found that the organisation was procuring equipment and false passports throughout the US and Europe for fellow members to commit acts of terrorism in Iran. The organisation designates military-style ranks to members based on their loyalty, uses complex communication methods designed to hide their traces and operates very much like the reputed Al Qaeda terrorist network does, with cells within cells and the resources to get things done. But unlike the contrived 'al Qaeda network' where FBI double-agents infiltrate groups of unemployed Muslims, pays them large sums of money, gives them bomb-making equipment, then entraps them by suggesting they blow up public landmarks, the MEK network is real.

"Former members have described the group as a cult that promotes celibacy and martyrdom, takes away members' children and uses psychological methods to pressure members and force them to remain obedient and follow orders."

~ Radio Free Europe, April 2011

France Harbors Terrorists

The MEK's Parisian camp, where the leadership currently resides while the rank-and-file remain in Iraq, is no less weird than Camp Ashraf. Essentially a series of buildings knocked into one complex, these operational headquarters are heavily guarded with armed security checkpoints. We're meant to believe this is to protect its members from 'the Iranian threat', but I rather suspect that it's required to keep cult members from escaping. In an interview Massoud Rajavi gave to the Corriere della Sera in 2002, the journalist described the level of security he witnessed there:

His [Rajavi's] dwelling in Auver-sur-Oise, in the Parisian suburbs, is much like a fortress. There is a high wall keeping it concealed from suspicious eyes. There are high voltage barbed wires around as well as searchlights on the walls illuminating the surroundings. The road to Massoud Rajavi's villa (leadership centre) is controlled by two French check-points equipped with machine guns. The only entrance to the villa is guarded by Mojahedin forces themselves.

In June 2003, when a French court ruled that the MEK and its numerous front groups constituted a terrorist organization, French anti-terrorist police raided various MEK offices in and around Paris, including its garrison at Auvers-sur-Oise, arresting 160 members of the MEK and confiscating millions of euros. Nicolas Sarkozy, Interior Minister at the time, expressed concern that the MEK "wanted to make France its support base, notably after the intervention in Iraq," while Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of France's domestic intelligence service, warned that the group was "transforming its Val d'Oise centre into an international terrorist base."

MEK cells across North America and Europe whirled into action, busing their devotees to coordinated protests. 40 cult members went on hunger strike. Assisted by fellow devotees, another 16 set themselves on fire, two of them fatally. Maryam Rajavi and the rest of the French MEK leadership were immediately released. Whatever was said to French president Jacques Chirac, he backed down immediately. The MEK has been left alone by the French government since then.

How the Myth of Iran's Nukes Began

Three months prior to that, in March 2003, the US launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. While Bush was prancing around the USS Lincoln in a codpiece declaring 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq, something very interesting was taking place in the background, something which was only revealed four years later in 2007, on a BBC Newsnight program. Realising that it was in its interest to prevent Iraq from sliding into all-out civil war, the Iranian government sent a letter to the White House offering the following:

Iran would use its influence to support stabilization in Iraq

Iran would open its civilian nuclear energy program to full international inspections

Iran would end its support of Hamas and Hezbollah

In return, Iran requested the following:

A halt to US hostile behavior

Abolition of all economic sanctions

Most specifically, the pursuit of the MEK leadership and the repatriation of their members

It was all there; Iran was prepared to cooperate with the US in Iraq, cooperate with Israel and the US in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, and allow full transparency of its nuclear program... if only the US would help them dismantle the MEK. The US State Department wanted to pursue it, but the Neocons torpedoed the deal.

Posters of Massoud and Maryam Rajavi at Camp Ashraf

Just think of the ramifications of this US refusal to accept what amounts to an extraordinary olive branch. America's murderous attack on Iraq killed over one million civilians. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon would never have happened because Hezbollah would have been finished as a fighting force. Operation Cast Lead would never have happened because Hamas would never have come to power in Gaza. Then again, we cannot forget just how profitable war is for the warmongers.

But what is really twisted here is that the three specific offers made by Iran in 2003 later became the very same conditions the US said Iran must meet if it is to avoid increased sanctions and the threat of airstrikes on its nuclear installations by the US and allies, followed by certain all-out war.

So why don't the Iranians and Americans just revisit the original offer and shake on it?

Because since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003, the duplicitous MEK has been busy selling the world the Iranian equivalent of the Big WMD Lie. Undoubtedly with the connivance of the CIA. It was the MEK who told the Bush White House that Iran was secretly building nuclear weapons. That's right, the incessant barrage of propaganda about Iran's intentions vis a vis its nuclear program stems from false information provided to the Bush administration by this vehemently anti-Iranian organisation. In fact, at least 20 'startling revelations about Iran's nuclear weapons program' in the past 10 years have all come through the MEK. In case you were wondering, that's exactly how the rationale for the invasion of Iraq was manufactured: through the peddling of baseless claims by Iraqis in exile with a power lust disguised a personal grudge.

"We Don't Speak to Evil"

When the US invaded Iraq, it bombed the MEK camps and killed some of its fighters. Former MEK member Anne Singleton has reported that when it became obvious to Rajavi that Saddam was history, he reached out to the Americans and promised full cooperation in exchange for protection. Bombing the MEK camps was most probably stage-managed so the group could surrender to the US without arousing Iraqi suspicions. In April 2003, the US publicly announced that it had brokered an agreement with the Rajavis whereby the MEK switched allegiances from Saddam Hussein to the US government, although the MEK is credited with providing the Bush-Cheney White House with 'intelligence' on Iran's non-existent nukes as early as the summer of 2001.

U.S. officials "made MEK members swear an oath to democracy and resign from the MEK," reveals an intelligence source, "and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them."Reliance on the MEK began under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, and soon MEK soldiers were being used in special operations missions in Iran. "They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all," said one intelligence official of the MEK's American handlers.

A fanatical MEK devotee at Camp Ashraf

With breathtaking hypocrisy, Donald Rumsfeld declared US-designated MEK terrorists to be "protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention", while thousands of innocent Muslims at home and abroad were rounded up, tortured and 'renditioned', justified under the pretext that the Geneva Convention did not apply to them because they were 'enemy combatants'.

Such is life under Orwellian pathocratic rule in the post-9/11 world; terrorists become 'our allies', and innocent civilians become terrorists.

In spite of countlessreports from US government agencies stating the contrary, the Bush administration chose to believe the MEK's 'intelligence' that Iran was secretly building a nuclear arsenal.

"Ashraf is 14 square miles of ungenerous desert surrounded by aprons of barbed wire, gun towers and guards in trough-like bunkers, shaded by camouflage netting and dehydrated palm trees, their trunks thickened by dust. As you pass the checkpoints and dragons'-teeth tire crunchers into the tidy military town, you feel you've entered a fictional world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around; about 50 percent of the soldiers are male. But everywhere I turned, I saw women dressed in khaki uniforms and mud-colored head scarves, driving back and forth along the avenues in white pickups or army-green trucks, staring ahead, slightly dazed, or walking purposefully, a slight march to their gaits as at a factory in Maoist China."

'The Cult of Rajavi', Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times, July 13, 2003

The US State Department knew that cooperation with the MEK was bad news and wanted to dismantle its camps, but the Pentagon wanted to keep them operational because the CIA realised they would be useful for manufacturing the crisis with Iran. The schism within the US government regarding its close cooperation with the MEK to destabilize Iran was also apparent in a 2007 Sunday Telegrapharticle which reported that "a faction in the U.S. Defence Department wants to unleash the MEK". This "faction" has kept the MEK alive since Saddam was removed from power. When a $400 million budget was passed by the US Congress in 2007 to orchestrate regime change in Iran, the "faction" made sure the MEK was the largest recipient of funds. On the surface, the US government kept its distance, officially recognising them as terrorists. At the same time, they clandestinely used them as much as they could, and the Rajavis were only too happy to oblige.

In exchange for surrendering its arms to the American occupation forces, the US military guarded Camp Ashraf, ostensibly to protect it from Iranian attack, but in reality because the US had plans for the MEK in its future confrontation with Iran. Journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker in April 2012 that the Mossad-MEK leak to NBC News in February this year came from the White House. Hersh's report also blew the lid on the US government position that they were "not involved with this group". From 2005 until 2008 the US Joint Special Operations Command (a.k.a. the CIA) conducted training for cult members of this "foreign terrorist organization" at a "counterintelligence training facility" in the desert north of Las Vegas. Hersh's source told him the purpose of disrupting Iran's nuclear energy program was not to "take out Einsteins" but to "affect Iranian psychology and morale" by "demoraliz[ing] the whole system." This extended to attacking oil and gas pipelines, oil refineries, transport infrastructure and targeting civilians through indiscriminate bombings. The operations were "primarily being done by M.E.K. through liaison with the Israelis." Even the Israeli Stuxnet virus which crippled Iranian IT systems was delivered by an MEK agent.

What is becoming apparent here is that the Mossad has used the MEK to disseminate lies as 'intelligence on Iran' to the US government, and not just about Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. If the 'Iran nuke program' is a fabrication, then Israel's real purpose in using the MEK to "demoralize" Iran is to provoke the Iranian government to retaliate. You see, Israel and the US don't want Hamas and Hezbollah to cease to exist. Israel and the US don't want the Iranian regime to assist the US in Iraq. Israel and the US don't want the world to see that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. They need to force a phony crisis with Iran in order to provoke a war with her. They need enemies to justify their miserable warmongering existence.

The MEK in turn was catapulted into pole position among Washington powerbrokers as the organisation to take over Iran once the nuclear showdown came to a head and regime change demolished the Mullahs' rule (or so it wishfully thinks). The MEK provides perfect cover for Israeli antagonism because both the Zionist entity and the MEK are sworn enemies of Iran.

Now we can begin to understand how this relatively small player came to be the organisation that broke the news that Iran had been 'secretly hiding' uranium enrichment facilities from the IAEA for two decades. Capitalising on the issue du jour, Iran's purported nuclear weapons, the MEK network focused on telling the Necocon chicken-hawks in Washington exactly what the Israelis wanted them to hear. Taking outward form as either the NCRI or the PMOI, the cult has been freely holding press conferences at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, in London, New York, Paris and Brussels, where they cite their 'unnamed sources' (Mossad) and dish out the latest 'intelligence' on Iran. This despite their designation as a terrorist organisation and despite the FBI knowing full well that its multiple sub-groups, acronyms and front organisations are one and the same MEK terrorist cult.

Relatives of the cult members wrestle with Iraqi guards at the main entrance to Camp Ashraf.

The current Iraqi government has had enough of the MEK and wants the cult out of the country as soon as possible. Citing MEK atrocities against Iraqis during its alliance with Saddam Hussein, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki recently said"We will no longer tolerate the presence of the MKO on Iraqi soil. This is an internationally sanctioned terror organization. It has not only carried out assassinations against political and religious personalities in Iran but it also has a bloody record in Iraq." Families of its remaining 3,000 or so brainwashed members hold daily vigils at the gates of the sprawling desert complex.

Deadlines for the disbandment of Camp Ashraf have been repeatedly extended because the Iraqis are under tremendous pressure from the CIA and the Israelis to keep them there. Massoud's whereabouts are unknown although he is rumoured to have been airlifted out of the camp by helicopter when American forces arrived in 2003. In the meantime, Maryram has become the public face of the organisation in the West and has been welcomed into Western 'high society'. Camp Ashraf has been turned into a 'cause celebre' by the MEK leadership, who are extremely proactive in garnering political interest in 'resolving' the rank-and-file's stateless predicament. I put 'resolving' in quotes because the Rajavis are not really interested in the well-being of their members. They are only interested in leveraging their plight (a plight they created) in order to promote the MEK's political ambitions to replace the incumbent regime in Iran. In fact, the way they have manipulated gullible Westerners into taking pity on them has remarkable similarities to the way the Israeli government holds its own people psychologically captive.

Nearly 70% of the MEK population may have been recruited through deception and kept at Camp Ashraf against their will.

~ Rand Report to Pentagon, 2009

Cult-ivating Political Psychopaths

Show me the colour of your money: Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of hundreds of high-level paid advocates on behalf of the MEK terror-cult

Mayram Rajavi has been hosting marathon conferences in Washington, DC, Paris, Brussels and elsewhere. The MEK's aim is to get itself 'delisted' from the US terror list. Its successful propaganda campaign has already seen it removed from terrorist group status in the UK and EU. The names of those jumping on the bandwagon for delisting this cruel and manipulative terror-cult reads like a who's who of Psychopaths in Power. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, while bemoaning the MEK's predicament at this high-level conference in Paris in January, told a large crowd of flag-waving MEK supporters that "once we get through the Republican primaries, I think it's a certainty that this issue [the MEK] will become a front and center issue because it symbolises all of the values that we want to address in this election on national security and human rights." Indeed, if you're in the US, you may have noticed the MEK has been running TV ads non-stop during the Republican campaign, pleading with the US government to delist the MEK and 'let our people go'.

Other who have given rousing speeches on the MEK's behalf at that event in Paris in January include: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani; François Colcombet, a senior French judge and founder of the French Committee for a Democratic Iran; Philippe Douste-Blazy, UN Deputy Secretary-General and former French Foreign Minister, outed as a pedophile by another former French Minister; US General Hugh Shelton, former chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff; Judge Michael Mukasey, former US Attorney General; Ingrid Betancourt, Columbian presidential candidate; Yves Bonne, former head of French Counter-terrorism; John Sano, former CIA National Clandestine Service's Deputy Director; General David Phillips, former Commander of US Military Police; Geir Haarde, former Icelandic Prime Minister; Aiham Samarrae, former Iraqi cabinet minister; Carlo Ciccioli, member of Italian parliament; Lord Ken Maginnis, member of UK House of Lords; André Glucksmann, member of New France Philosophers; and William Bourdon, a prominent French jurist.

That's the list of speakers at just one recent conference; there have been many more, countless videos of which are posted on YouTube.

Snake in a suit: Maryam Rajavi speaking about the evils of the Iranian government at yet another conference in which she is flanked on either side by high-level paid advocates and her every word cheered by adoring cult followers.

Unsurprisingly, the MEK has been paying each shill huge speaking fees, with the money apparently coming through Saudi Arabia and Israel. Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Secretary spoke at another conference. Yes, that's right, the man whose job it was to 'protect the homeland from terrorists' is now paid to go on speaking tours to promote a terrorist organisation responsible for deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. John Bruton, former prime minister of Ireland, is another advocate. And there's more... In April, former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA), former Governor Howard Dean (D-VT) Necon chicken-hawk John Bolton and others came under investigation and were issued subpoenas by the US Department of Treasury for taking cash from a designated terrorist group.

But let's not kid ourselves, no action will be taken against the MEK because the MEK is now a well-entrenched US and Israeli asset. The Obama administration isn't about to prosecute an organisation (terrorist or not) when a whole cast of prominent politicos in the West are falling over themselves to show their support. The fawning is eerily reminiscent of the displays these types put on when the Israel Lobby rolls into town. Some 400 MEK members have already been relocated from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty, the enormous US military base north of Baghdad. The MEK has been doing everything in its power to stall the relocation of the remaining cult members.

The United Nations and the U.S. government have worked tirelessly in recent months to avoid a violent clash between the MEK and the Shiite-led Iraqi government, which is determined to oust the MEK from Camp Ashraf, where more than 3,000 members of the group, many of them suspected to be armed, have lived for years. Two previous attempts by the Iraqi government to enter the camp resulted in bloody confrontations.

But the U.N. and the State Department's efforts have been made exponentially more difficult due to the MEK's surprisingly strong base of support in Washington. In recent weeks, retired U.S. officials and politicians -- many of whom admit to being paid by the MEK or one of its many affiliates -- have mounted a sophisticated media campaign accusing the U.N. and the U.S. government of forcing the group to live in subhuman conditions against its will at Camp Liberty, an accusation U.S. officials say is as inaccurate as it is unhelpful.

Two peas in a pod: Placed next to the pro-Israel propaganda piece is a full page ad bemoaning conditions in Camp liberty, conditions created by the MEK cult itself

"This is tough enough without paid advocates making it worse," one official told The Cable.

"Camp Liberty: A Prison For Iranian Dissidents in Iraq," reads a March 3 full-page ad in the New York Times, leveling the surprising accusation that the former U.S. military base is unfit for human occupation. The ad quotes former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani calling Camp Liberty "a concentration camp" -- a charge Giuliani made at an MEK-sponsored conference late last month in Paris. The ad also quotes former Democratic National Committee chairman and Vermont Governor Howard Dean, former Homeland Security secretary and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz trashing Camp Liberty.

However, according to an Obama administration official who works on the issue, it's actually the MEK that is trashing Camp Liberty -- literally. According to this official, the U.N. has reported that MEK members at Camp Liberty have been sabotaging the camp, littering garbage and manipulating the utilities to make things look worse than they really are. While there are some legitimate problems at the camp, the official admitted, the U.N. has been monitoring Camp Liberty's water, sewage, and food systems on a daily basis and the conditions are better than the MEK is portraying.

Andrew Card, Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge and Philip Zelikow were among the speakers at another symposium organized by Near East Human Rights Initiative (NEHRI), an MEK front, on 28 April 2011

The New York Times ad is only the latest in a years-long, multi-million dollar campaign by the MEK and its supporters to enlist famous U.S. politicians and policymakers in their efforts to get the group removed from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations and resist Iraqi attempts to close Camp Ashraf, which the new government sees as a militarized cult compound on its sovereign territory.

The campaign has included huge rallies outside the State Department, massive sit-ins at congressional hearings, and an ongoing vigil outside the State Department's C Street entrance. MEK supporters there tout the support of a long list of officials, including Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Sen. Robert Torricelli, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers, former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, former CIA Director Porter Goss, senior advisor to the Romney campaign Mitchell Reiss, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, and former Sen. Evan Bayh.

To create the illusion that they have broad popular support, the MEK is even enticing homeless and unemployed people to attend their colour-coordinated rallies and inflate their numbers. People are bussed and flown in at no personal cost, receiving transportation and in some cases lodging and meals. Bear in mind that, as an FTO, the MEK is legally barred from organising at all. Reflecting on the intensifying atmosphere of hysteria and paranoia in the US since 9/11, the favourable treatment the MEK receives is all the more bizarre when we compare it with the arrests of Muslims accused of "aiding and abetting terrorism" when all they wanted to do was raise money for their local mosque or to support emergency flood relief to desperate people in inundated Pakistan.

Dupe: Surrounded by MEK devotees at a protest at the State Department last August, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) called for the US government to take the MEK off its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

"One of the greatest moments was when my uncle, President Kennedy, stood in Berlin and uttered the immortal words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,'" Kennedy exclaimed. "Today, I'm honored to repeat my uncle's words, by saying 'I am an Iranian, I am an Ashrafi.'"

France's Favourite Suicide Cult

The list of speakers at this conference included one Alain Vivien. You may remember him from MIVILUDES cult-hunting fame. This guy is obsessed with protecting children from 'cultic deviance' in France and at the same time he is advocating on behalf of a real terrorist cult with headquarters in Paris for the past 30-something years and a list of damning human rights abuses to its name - including against children.

In 'Big Agri-Business, Big Pharma, Arms Trafficking, Suicide Cults and MIVILUDES - The Truth Behind France's Cult-Hunting Policies Exposed', Joe Quinn and I demonstrated that the 'suicide-cult' threat is greatly overblown by the French government in order to justify encroachment on civil liberties and to subtly terrorise people with tactics amounting to Inquisition by a modern Thought Police. The thing is, there are actual cults out there that really do brainwash people and really do engage in massive criminality and suicides, but hidden truth is that they are protected by the same people screaming 'CULT!' at anything and anyone who tries to promote ideas that would truly improve the lives of many.

When you look into it, you realise that it is the nefarious influence of state intelligence agencies that lies behind all the 'suicide-cults' that have surfaced in recent decades. Mind control experimentation, drugs/weapons smuggling and secret armies all go hand in hand, providing perfect cover for deep state actors to manipulate the course of political events and the lives of billions of people

MIVILUDES' stock response to criticism from the UN and other international organisations that remind the French government that France is a signatory to international laws protecting human rights is that "they are critical [of us] because they have been infiltrated by 'the Cults'." Yet here we have a totally nutzoid organisation operating largely out of France, committing gross psychological manipulation and extreme violence on its members, and killing and maiming thousands of people in Iran and Iraq in the name of the power ambitions of its two leaders. And all the while, French parliamentarians, French intelligence officials, French intelligentsia and French mayors are lining up with their US and European counterparts to promote this cult which relies on terror to police its members and achieve its goal of taking power in Tehran.

Has the Rajavi cult ever received mention in the annual MIVILUDES report? Not once. Can we say the French government has been infiltrated by a cult? Yes we can.

Although their compound outside Paris was raided in 2003, that's all water under the bridge now. No doubt it was 'just a misunderstanding'. With friends like the Mossad, the CIA, French intelligence, Rudolf Giuliani, Philippe Douste-Blazy, 5-star Pentagon generals, US Congressmen and EU dignitaries, you can be sure that MIVILUDES and the witch-hunters would sooner crack open the champagne and lay out the red carpet for their ideological brethren in the MEK than chase them out of town.

Earlier this week US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated that the MEK will soon be delisted as a terrorist organization. Once this happens, the way will be open for its official recognition as the Iranian government-in-waiting, a move that will leave no way back for US-Iranian relations and could set the world on an unalterable course for global conflagration.

Recommended viewing for more background on the People's Mujahedin of Iran

'Cult of the Chameleon', 2007 Al Jazeera report

'Espionage: Struggle for Survival' (or How the MEK became an information laundry for the Mossad), 2010 Press TV report